My cats are currently eating Weruva and Merricks cat food. They only eat wet food and due to crystals in the bladder, my vet advised to no longer feed dry food. In the next few months, I will be going through a move and job change that will change my financial status and buying Weruva and Merricks may no longer be possible financially. 3 of my 4 cats love Friskies, I bought some to try it out and they love it, my one cat does not but maybe with time she will.

The question is… is there really a huge difference in their health/life span between all natural and regular cat food? My vet told me that as long as it’s AAFCO approved then it’s fine. I though still fed them Weruva and Merricks. Do you feed your cats Friskies or 9Lives or a common commercial cat foods? My friends have cats who have lived close to 20 years with no health problems and they ate regular cat food that was picked up at the supermarket. I’m wondering if I’m doing a bad thing switching their food?

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Like on the View, what to feed is a VERY HOT TOPIC on Catster. There are people who swear that grocery store shelf food is fine, their cats thrive on it, etc. Other people will loudly protest that it's garbage, has all sorts of fillers and nasty stuff in it and they wouldn't feed it to their worst enemy. Me? I feed Purina One to both cats and both dogs and they consistently get good check-ups. I've had both species live well into old age eating regular grocery store food. My advice is to feed what your vet suggests. Explain to them what your budget is and they will be able to suggest a good food to fit within what you can afford. Keep vetting your kitties to catch anything that might be a health concern. Good luck with your move, etc.

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Martini's mom: how do you buy his food? If you're going all wet, it pays to buy from the web rather than from a store. Sure, it's a pain in the butt to fork money all at once, but it'll save you about 50 cents a can, in most cases. We eat Weruva, and we know it can get pretty expensive. Amazon sometimes doesn't just have it on sale, they offer free shipping.

Alas, we're the ones who believe that grocery store canned is garbage. We won't eat it... I personally won't even eat many other brands of food. I've picked and nibbled on Avoderm, and I do ok wiht the occasional can of Wellness Core, but if I don't get Weruva, I go on food strikes, and since I'm the skinny one in our cat family, mom has pretty much resigned herself to the fact that it's Weruva or nothing for me. :(

And some humans can live a long life on junk food, but its still not good for everyone

AAFCO approval just means it meets certain nutritional standards, the kitty equivalent of 100% of RDA - but eating some cat foods is like only eating Total cereal would be to a human. It's filler food with added vitamins.

If you must use grocery store foods pick very carefully. I've never seen even a 1/2 decent grocery dry food. In canned foods try to find flavors without added wheat, soy or corn- nothing "gluten". This usually means no "gravy" style flavors as gluten is used as a thickener. Fish flavors tend to be safest, but there are other reasons a solely fish diet is not necessarily good for kitties, especially crystal prone ones.

Try to keep getting the Weruva and Merricks and supplement with better grocery store flavors to save a little. If you have Trader Joes in your area check them out. I know the Tuna for cats is ok and cheap, I'm not sure about their other flavors.

There are some decent grocery store wet foods. My concern w/ feeding the Friskies etc. type wet foods is the quality of the meat and ingredients. It may be rendered, not human grade, and have lots of by-products (some by-prods are okay, but not as the only ingredient). We don't know for sure, but there is info about those type wet foods using poorer quality ingredients. But other than that, you can find decent canned food with good amount of protein and lower carb content. Fancy Feast has some canned varieties with no grain or gluten. I found a new wet food at Target called "Boots & Barkley" which looks good to me. I think it's okay to feed these foods, but I would feed the better quality food when I could afford to. Also, you can save money with the larger cans.

The hot topic about food is often concerning the potential problems w/ dry food - urinary probs are one. Also, I think most all pet foods are AAFCO approved. You could post in the food/nutrition forum for more info.